"Archer" is a short story that was written in September of this year for my creative writing class. Very loosely based on a reimagining of an unfinished novel that I co-authored in fourth grade, it features sibling dynamics brought up to eleven in a fantasy world. Many a sibling will claim, "I'm going to kill my brother/sister!", but would they really be able to follow through? And what would happen if you were forced to do it?

Archer

They were sent their assignments by letter. The officials could just
have easily walked across the complex to address them in person. But
this way, none of them could voice a complaint without making a fuss.
This was the way it always had been. It was one of the many unspoken
rules of the Hall: assassins didn't object. Assassins received their
tasks and carried them out. Assassins detached themselves from
whatever misgivings they had as they collected whatever gold was
offered to them as payment. It was good money. At the Hall you
couldn't afford to be picky.

That
being said, Lek was surprised that Arria didn't even consider
lodging a complaint in the beginning. He had been sure that she would
weigh her options, analyze each decision and its outcomes, and
ultimately decide to rail against the establishment as she had done
so many times before, pitting her high moral standards against the
passive officials. Lek wouldn't have blamed her; it would have been
second nature to Arria. “The way she carries herself, you'd think
she was a bloody crusader,” he had once heard the others muttering
in the courtyard. “A noble, a knight or somethin'.”

But
no, Arria just scanned over the piece of paper, her eyes showing no
glimmer of recognition or regret or anything. She tucked the note
into her pocket with a sharp nod, and headed off to the archery range
for the approved mission-preparation practice.

He
followed her, slipping in on her right side, as if to shield her from
the calculating glances of the other assassins. “Ari? You okay?”
She picked up her pace. Her gaze was still locked ahead, on a
distant destination that only she could see. “Are you okay?” Lek
repeated.

They
reached the range then. Arria, still unresponsive, plucked the first
bow and quiver off of the wall within her reach and drew out an
arrow, all in one swift motion, ready to fire.

“Ari,
do you want to talk?”

Lek
watched as the arrowhead buried itself in the center of the target,
the fletching at the back shaking with the force of the impact. A
kill wound, at least. Quick. Clean. Efficient. The instructors would
have approved.

“No,”
she finally replied, stepping back to reload. “Just go.”

Lek
did as he was told. As the back door shut behind him, he lingered for
a moment to listen—expecting a sob, a scream, something—but
he was left unsatisfied. What was going on in her head? For once, Lek
had no idea. Even though the assassins were instructed not to show
any sort of emotion, that was an area in which Arria had always
failed. She was a passionate sort of person; her emotions flew out
from her like arrows, burying themselves in the hearts of whoever
dared the challenge her while she stood, proud and wrathful, in the
distance. Lek hadn't been surprised when she had chosen archery as
her discipline.

He took the note out of his own pocket and read it over again,
searching for something that his best friend might have missed, but
nothing had changed. The same condemning yet emotionless words stared
him in the face.

Team 013:

You have been assigned to kill Fall Lyrrin, commander in the court
of the king of Grik, by the end of this week. Printed below is some
basic information about the target as well as his photo and his
expected whereabouts at the optimal time for assassination.

And below:

Siblings: One sister, Arria Lyrrin, currently employed by the
Hall, in active Team 013.

Lek knew very little about Arria's older brother, save that the two
had fallen out years ago and hadn't spoken since. She had mentioned
him once, maybe twice, and that was it. Another one of those unspoken
rules: at the Hall, your family and your past didn't matter. Any
emotional links to the outside world could weaken your performance.
Perhaps Arria and Fall had been close before the argument, but he was
no longer a major part of her life.

Until now, at least.

Lek folded the note back up and slid it into his pocket, and, after a
backward glance at the door to the archery range, walked away. He had
a mission to prepare for.

…..

It was Torin's first assignment, and
thus she had every right and reason to be excited; still, Lek
couldn't help but think that his younger sister was being a spoiled
brat. Didn't she have any
sympathy? The girl was certainly smart enough to make the connection
between Arria's last name and that of the team's assigned target. So
why was Torin grinning, eagerly oiling and stringing her bow while
her own mentor
suffered in silence? Then again, even when they were younger Torin
had been a tad... insensitive. Lek had learned to work around it.

The court of Grik was a good two
days' journey by horse, which was the assassins' preferred method of
travel. The team rode out of the gates of the Hall on Tuesday
morning, exactly a day after they had first received the operation
instructions. There was no time to waste when you were on the job.
Every moment was life-or-death—for you and
your target.

No one was going to allow you time to mourn your victim, either.

Lek shifted uncomfortably as the
metal blades of the knives he had hidden in his jacket pressed
against his shirt, the cold of the steel seeping through the fabric
into his skin. There was too much silence, out on the road. Too much
time to think. Back in the Hall or out on the job, you didn't think
about what you did, you just did
it. The instructors had never seen fit to warn any of them about this
stillness, or the guilt that came with it.

Torin's chestnut mare pulled up alongside Lek, and he glanced at the
fifteen-year-old girl. With her chiseled facial features and
white-blond hair pulled back into a tight bun, a faint smirk still
clinging to her face, she looked cruel. Downright sadistic. The very
picture of an assassin. Arria, a few feet ahead, looked more like a
soldier, which was what their cover was supposed to be. Tall like
Torin, but more sturdily built, graceful only when drawing a bow.
Also, rather stolid, which was incredibly out of character for her.

Amazing how different two archers could be.

The silence stretched on for hours, occasionally interrupted by a
quick conversation started by Torin or maybe Lek, but never Arria.
Arria didn't talk, not even when they settled down to eat lunch. She
just stared into the distance, lips pressed into a thin line and
hands clenching the reins so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

Night fell as they crossed through the hamlet of Thawlin. The three
companions dismounted at a pleasant-looking little inn called the
Pale Horse and rented a room for the night. No one there raised an
eyebrow at them. Apparently small bands of soldiers passing through
was a common occurrence, nothing noteworthy; either that or the
weapons on their backs were enough to shut everyone up.

It was both comforting and unnerving to Lek, being feared.

…..

“Ari?”

The girl turned around, eyes darting from side to side. “Why are
you awake?” In the early light of dawn, her eyes looked red and
puffy. It was clear that she had been crying. Which was something
that Arria never did.

Lek sat down beside her. “I've been meaning to talk to you for a
while. You know, away from...” He tilted his head towards Torin's
sleeping bag.

“Yeah, well, so have I.” Arria
tugged at her dark ponytail. “Away from everything.
I couldn't... I couldn't let them hear.”

“What, the people at the Hall?”

“Yes.” She exhaled deeply, and
emotion started to break into the flow of her voice. “Yes. They
don't... they wouldn't understand.
They'd see it as weakness. Maybe rebellion, too, if I let myself get
too angry.”

“Is it?”

“What?”

“Rebellion?” Lek asked. “Are
you going to, you know, refuse to do it?”

“No.” Arria began staring again.
“No. This is something I have to do. Something I'm going to have to
overcome.”

“Whatever happened to the
independent moral crusader I knew before, huh?” Lek tried to keep
his tone encouraging, but something accusatory couldn't help but slip
in. “What happened to my best friend, who would do anything to make
people see justice?”

Arria glanced away. “My brother
was always a threat to the well-being of the people. Fall was brutal
and arrogant, even when we were young. The more influence he gets in
the government, the worse off this country is going to get.” What
little emotion she had shown a few moments before disappeared. “I
kept trying to bring him
to justice, but it never worked. Now I get my chance.”

“You can't honestly think that,
Ari. That's not like you—no, no, sorry, it is. It's exactly like
something you'd say to try to convince
yourself that this is right.” Lek glanced over his shoulder at his
sister's still form. She looked so much more innocent in her sleep.
“Don't you think that there are times when I want to kill Torin?
Because she's being so cruel? And yet, I could never do that! She's
my family! And she's not a bad person!”

“Why are you trying to make me
feel guilty?” she snapped, losing any illusions of emotional
control. “Don't you
think that I'm having just as hard a time of this as you would have
with Torin? Or haven't you realized that I spend nights awake
thinking about how everybody I've ever killed had a family, people
that loved them? They weren't bad people, either! None of us are!”
She took in a shaky breath. Lek started to speak, but Arria cut him
off. “I'm just trying to get through with this with some dignity,
okay?”

Arria sighed, and her fingers twitched, as if grasping for her
weapon. “Thanks, but I don't need help. This is something I have to
do.”

…..

They set out on the road again, and it seemed that the closer they
got to their destination, the more tension emerged among the members
of the group. Ever since their conversation that morning, Lek had
hardly spoken to Arria, and she seemed to have no desire to start a
conversation. Simultaneously, Lek grew increasingly frustrated with
Torin. He knew that he really shouldn't be, of course. She didn't
know any better—she had been practically trained from birth to act
this way, conditioned to accept things like this. And then his mind
turned back to what he had said to Arria, about how he could never
kill Torin, and the horror of what Arria was being forced to do...

Why couldn't he be more like his
little sister, oblivious to the wrongness
of everything around him? It would make everything a whole lot
easier. But then again, assassination was never meant to be easy. It
was a job for the most hardened of souls. Someone who could handle
strains like this.

On the other hand, did that make those people immoral?

“Perhaps we should shoot him while
he's asleep,” Torin mused. Lek saw Arria's body stiffen. “Less of
a chance that he'll make a noise and give our position away. And
he'll be in his bedchamber, an added plus.”

“Please, Torin. Someone might hear
us,” he said.

“Exactly.”

Lek rolled his eyes, marveling at his sister's lack of concealment.
That was going to cost her her life one day, for sure...

No! I can't let that happen! I won't!

He inhaled sharply, reining in his thoughts. Protective thinking was
the kind of thing that endangered everyone on the mission. In any
case, an assassin should run for his life and assume that the others
will have the clarity of mind to do so. Anyone who doesn't is clearly
a detriment to the team. The needs of the organization outweigh any
personal loyalties an assassin might have.

The words of the assignment letter,
which he had destroyed back at the Hall, rolled through his head. You
have been assigned to kill Fall Lyrrin, commander in the court of the
king of Grik, by the end of this week... Printed below is some basic
information about the target as well as his photo and his expected
whereabouts at the optimal time for assassination. Kill,
target, optimal time for assassination. No one deluded themselves
about the kind of work they were carrying out, not with those words
staring them in the face.

The knives once again pressed against his skin, and silence flooded
his ears. He almost wished Torin would start talking again.

…..

Assassins didn't dream. At least, not the way normal people did.

Lek's dreams had started to change after his first month at the Hall.
Gone were the twisting roads of chaos and whimsy, deep flights of the
subconscious more confusing than anything else. For an assassin,
sleep was light, and thus true dreams were infrequent. Instead, there
came quick visions, hazy glances into his state of mind. Lek's dreams
were always moving, always on the road, always ready to take action
as he slipped through the dusty mists of nowhere.

Lek killed people in his dreams.

And it wasn't a scary thing, either. He had no time to be emotionally
invested in his dreams, he was too busy moving. There was no thought
to it, no recoling in horror. Kind of like his life.

That night, Lek had his first real
nightmare in a long time. He was moving and killing, just like
normal, when Torin came up to him. He stabbed her; and as the blood
rushed out, he felt a stab in his own body. He actually felt
the pain. It was almost too much for him to bear, but he pressed on.
Then came Arria, and then his parents, his friends, his teacher, one
by one in a never-ending parade of pain. It grew quieter and quieter
still, until Lek could almost hear his own mind screaming—

He woke up terrified, because the pain was real.

Sleep had never been a repose for him, anyway.

…..

Everything went as planned, right up until Fall Lyrrin was decidedly
and unquestionably dead.

Arria lowered her bow. One arrow, that was all it had taken. Lek
would have killed the man himself, to spare his best friend the pain
of doing it, but knife wounds were messy and it was much safer to do
it from a distance, just in case. The arrow had cut through maybe
three yards of air and lodged itself in the sleeping Fall's temple.
Quick. Firm. Done.

After a few moments, the blood began to trickle out of the man's
would. Trickles turned to flows and soon it was gushing out and
drying in a crusty mess around his head and pillow.

Arria inhaled sharply.

Lek saw it in her eyes. Her face stayed exactly the same, but the
hardness in her eyes fell and shattered into a million pieces,
revealing the brokenness of the mind underneath. The corner of her
mouth twitched, and her whole body began shaking. She stepped
forward, hand stretched towards the arrow in her brother's head. Lek
started toward her, to pull her back into the safety of the shadows
and maybe calm her down until—

Arria screamed.

Before he could react, Torin grabbed Lek's arm and pulled, sprinting
towards the exit. “We have to leave. Now.”

“B-but we can't
just-”

“We can, and we have to,” she
hissed. “No matter what we do, they're going to find her, and she's
going to die. We can't let ourselves die with her.”

Lek twisted the girl's arm and
released himself from her grip. “Can't you bring yourself to care
at least one little bit?
She's suffering in there, going practically mad, and all you can
think about is getting back to the Hall unharmed?”

“What else is there to do,
Lek?” Torin glared at him. “Go back in? Fight off the guards? Run
into the throne room, climb on top of the furniture and scream to the
world that life isn't fair? Mount an attack on every establishment
that we can think of and watch the world burn because some people are
never going to be helped? They already know. A couple of young
assassins aren't going to overthrow the natural order and create a
utopia, a couple of young assassins are going to get caught and
hanged for murder. And Arria's not going to be saved either way.”
There was no trace of sarcasm or malice in her voice, only weariness.
Weariness and desperation.

“You think I have no sympathy, but
I'm only doing what I have to do. Better run away and live to see the
sunset like clever people than stay and fight and die like those
goddamn crusaders,”
she added, almost as an afterthought.

Lek nodded, and together the siblings pushed open the door to a swarm
of guards who had heard the scream. Torin shot them down as Lek
slashed at throats. They ran out of the building splattered with
blood, found their horses, and rode off back to the Hall bearing
mixed news.

But this time, Lek made sure to glance back before returning once
again to the silence of the road.